Traveling North America in our RV, the Ciaowagen

We traveled to Moab on May 12, and on our way from Capitol Reef National Park to Moab we stopped at Goblin Valley State Park (which according to at least one list is "The Best State Park in Utah"). Goblin Valley State Park The valley is full of compact hoodoos that look like they're made of mud but are in fact Entrada Sandstone (the same material that makes up Arches National Park). Hoodoos are rock formations that have very solid stone on top and softer layers of stone benea

Utah has 5 national parks, all in the southern half of the state, and we planned to visit them all. We crossed into Utah from Arizona on April 30, changing time zones (to Mountain Daylight Time) in the process. Zion National Park Our first destination was a small campground in Mount Carmel Junction, which lies close to eastern entrance to Zion National Park. Zion is the 2nd most visited national park, and most people come to it via the town of Springdale on the southern side

We left Tucson on Wednesday, April 15. Before departing town, we had the six tires on the Ciaowagen changed. RV tires tend to age out rather than wear out, with the rubber deteriorating from sun damage, and our tires were five years old. They also had 60,000 miles on them. We headed north to the Phoenix area, about a two hour drive. We parked the RV at the Elks Lodge in Tempe (near Phoenix). During the drive north from Tucson, we discovered that the dashboard air conditioning

Our last blog post focused primarily on our adventures in the Tucson desert. We've moved on to northern Arizona, but wanted the opportunity to share some of the other things we did during our time in the Tucson area. Some of these were repeats of past experiences. Others were entirely new for us. Mount Lemmon Skyway This beautiful road travels 12 miles up from the valley floor to the summit of Mount Lemmon. The road has a number of pulloffs, offering spectacular views of Tucs